Warren County hasn’t seen one of its citizens represent it in Congress since Bill Clinger left office in Jan. 1997.

In fact, there’s precious few from the county over the last 200 years who have.

Statistically, you have a greater chance of being President from Ohio (8 presidents) than serving in Congress from Warren County

I have a feeling I’ll get skewered for missing one but I can only come up with six county Congressmen (and I’ve written previously about each of these) – Clinger, Earl Beshlin, Glenni Schofield, Carlton Curtis and Charles Stone.

As the world turns, I missed one.

And just realized it a couple weeks ago.

It’s Chapin Hall and he served at what can probably be called the most divisive time in the nation’s history (current events notwithstanding).

He was a Republican representative in the 36th Congress, serving from March 1859 until March 1861.

That 1858 election marked a seismic shift in national politics. Ultimately, the House was split three ways but, for the first time, the Republican Party took a plurality of seats. It set the stage for the 1860 election when the presidency, House and Senate all went Republican, an event which precipitated the outbreak of the Civil War.

Hall was born in Busti in July 1816, according to the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress. He “attended the common schools and the Jamestown, N.Y. Academy” before moving to Russell at the age of 25 in 1841.

He “engaged in lumber business and mercantile pursuits” for 10 years before he moved to Warren and worked in banking.

It’s not going to be a surprise that the election of 1858 was hotly contested. Republicans – including the ones that operated the Warren Mail – were unsurprisingly critical of Pres. James Buchanan’s policies.

The Mail editors used some hyperbolic political rhetoric to make their point in the September prior to the election.

“Never was there a more important election for Congressmen in Pennsylvania than the one now approaching,” they argued, suggesting the presidency in 1860 might get thrown into the House for resolution.

“In our own, the 24th District, the contest at best will be a close one. On one side is James L. Gillis who has thus far voted steadfastly against the will of his constituents, in favor of an Administration which has shamefully violated the pledges and principles upon which it went into power,” they argued.

“On the other hand, we have Chapin Hall of this county, a man much the superior of Mr. Gillis, direct from the ranks of the people and firmly opposed to the dictatorial policy of the Administration and the slave power which controls it, from first to last.”

Gillis had a lengthy career in state government but only one term in DC when he was defeated by Hall.

Govtrack.us, however, gives us less than a stirring endorsement of his two years in Congress as he missed 43.4 percent – 188 or 433 – of possible roll call votes. That source calls his vote percentage “much worse” than his fellow Congressmen.

His Congressional biography notes that Hall was not a candidate for a second term in 1860, shifting to the “manufacture of lumber products at Louisville, Ky., Fond du Lac, Wis., and Newark, N.J., and in the manufacture of worsted goods at Jamestown, N.Y,”

He died in 1879 at the age of 63 and is buried in Chautauqua County.

A short article was published in the Philadelphia Times and picked up in the Mail on Sept. 30, 1879.

“Hon. Chapin Hall, a prominent businessman of Newark, New Jersey, died yesterday at Jamestown, Chautauqua county, in which county he was born in 613 years ago. He will be remembered by those who can recall the political revolution in Pennsylvania in 1858 as the man who defeated Judge Gillis, of Elk, for Congress that year. It was the year of the Lecompton revolt, and judge Gillis who was a devoted friend and follower of Buchanan, was challenged for re-election to Congress by Chapin Hall. Mr. Hall served one term and was little known in public life beyond the fact that he had conquered the old Democratic leader who had ruled in the Northwestern wilderness of the State for a period of a generation….”